


Accident

by Rosella1356



Category: I Am Not Okay with This (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Major character death - Freeform, Turning yourself in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25050583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosella1356/pseuds/Rosella1356
Summary: After killing someone Sydeny ran away, and Stanley found her. He kept her safe, and they learned that she had to control these powers. Stanley did everything they could think of to make sure that she was safe for the public, but they had to test that control, and some things went wrong.
Relationships: Stanley Barber & Sydney Novak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Accident

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday fic for another one of my good friends. They mentioned that this fandom didn't have any major character death fanfics, so I created one for them. Hope you love it.

Sydney has been thinking ever since she took off in a run after killing Brad. Brad didn’t really deserve to die, just like she didn’t deserve to be hiding in Stanley’s basement while he explains to people over and over again that he has no idea what happened. 

He’s lying. He’s lying for her. She can’t bring herself to admit anything less than that. Because, she may not love him in the way that he loves her, but he deserves her to admit to herself that he loves her. That she’s taking advantage of his love to remain safe. That she’s using him. 

God, her thoughts make her sick in her own head. She almost can’t drown them out and the floor shakes before she gets a shaky control on them. She can’t afford to do more powerful things right now. Not when apparently, she could kill someone by making their head explode. 

She has to train. She has to get better at being able to control her emotions. The only problem is that when she’s with Stanley there is no middle ground. She trusts him, she feels safe with him, so the only way that he could push her into using her powers if she fell to far on the emotion spectra to even try to control something for a short period. 

She could try using her left over anger at Brad, but that seems even more dangerous than letting Stanley try to push her into being angry. At least when it was Stanley she didn’t actually hurt him when he pushes her. She aimed for the walls behind him. She aimed to scare him, not hurt him. 

Stanley walks down the stairs. “Stop thinking about things. I will figure out a plan of action. Perhaps, we’re going to end up with me being surrounded by psychology textbooks, trying to help you through the power of therapy while we avoid discussing about your powers.”

“And if the dark figure shows up?”

“Tell him to screw off. We’ve got this, Syd. I’ll help you,” he swears. 

Sydney smiles. The happiness almost floods her, and she forgets that there was a reason that she was focusing her pain on. That didn’t last long, but then she didn’t really need it to. She knows what the potential costs of her decisions could be. Just like anyone who has super powers. 

Stanley returns the smile. “Alright, so my dad shouldn’t be back anytime soon. That means we have some time before we have to come clean about anything. Unless, the cops decide that I am far too suspicious and get a warrant. But, there are some legal loopholes that I could use. Such as pointing out that I’m a minor, and they can’t really enter property by serving a warrant to a child or interrogate that child with out a parent or legal guardian nearby. That would buy you enough time to run,” he explains. 

“Right and the plan is?”

“The healing powers of therapy of course,” he says. 

Sydney can barely contain her laughter. She can’t believe that she still has one friend in this who isn’t scared of her. That isn’t running away. She’s killed someone, and he’s still standing next to her. 

That’s how the next few days are spent. With Stanley doing everything in his power to get as many textbooks on therapy as he can possibly find. He’s gone to the library, and the bookstore. He’s gotten pretty good at his rehearsed lie. After watching a classmate die in such a horrific manner, he wants to learn how to help himself and then be able to help others in a different life. No one even thinks to ask a question about why. To all of them this seems like a perfectly natural conclusion to everything that is happening at this moment. 

Stanley sits in front of her for the first session. Her anxiety is through the roof, but that doesn’t seem to be triggering her powers. She can’t tell whether it’s because Stanley is there and she feels safe or because she’s so scared of her powers that they’re staying hidden within in her, so that she can’t destroy them. 

“Okay, we’re going to start simple. Which emotions seem to cause your powers to explode from you?”

“Anger and anxiety,” she answers. That one is pretty easy. 

“Alright, and I know this is going to annoy you, but can you tell me honestly whether you think your father has anything to do with this?”

Sydney swallows hard. Once she would have answered that there is no way, but now she has to admit that his memory causes her to react with the most power, except for Brad. But, she tries not to think about what caused Brad to be so upsetting. 

Her eyes meet his. “I don’t know for sure either way, but probably.”

Stanley offers her a smile. The expression sincere on his face, which causes most of her discomfort to ease considerably. “Then, that’s where we start. We confront your issues with your father’s death, and we try to help you heal.”

“Shouldn’t we start with things that are less likely to cause me to lash out?”

“Proceed with caution,” he teases. “Everything in these books suggest that if we start with something else, that will either work really well or it will cause a backlash that could get me killed. I like the idea of you going in knowing that it could be triggering rather than trying to avoid the giant elephant in the room.”

Sydney nods. “Can we do it tomorrow though?”

Stanley shrugs. “Don’t see why not. The cops are divided on whether you’re the culprit or whether you were the target and Brad just a distraction.”

“Do you know about?” she starts before tears make their way out and she has to catch her breath. 

“Your brother is determined that this is a huge setup to kidnap you, and that if the cops don’t find you, he’ll have to make a suit like Iron Man and Batman to come get you. Your mother thinks that this could go either way, but if you are guilty that the cops should keep that from your brother,” Stanley answers the unspoken question. 

The rest of the night, they spend laying on the floor listening to crazy music from his collection. They’re happy for the evening just relaxing in each other’s company. 

Sydney can’t believe that she’s gotten lucky enough that she found someone who can handle her powers well enough to keep her around even knowing just how bad things could get one of these days. That’s part of what makes her smile even when she should still be curled up in a ball crying. 

In the morning, both of them eat a high calorie breakfast. Stanley is careful to keep topics light. Jokes about superheroes. Whether Ironman or batman would win in a huge fight. Whether either would bring in backup or whether they’d want to prove who was best without those issues. 

By the time the food was finished, Sydney was ready for the first session into the foray of her mind. Things that she had barely tried to communicate to her mother only to be shut down. 

“Alright. Can you tell me what the first thing that pops into your head when you think of your father?”

“That he made things easier,” she answers. 

“How so?”

“When I was nervous, he would talk me down from whatever was upsetting me. Even if that was another family member. Or if I was getting bratty because I couldn’t figure out what was setting me off, he would just sit me down and try to reason through my reaction until he could find what went wrong. And, I relied on that. I needed that in order to communicate some days. And, I’ve tried with my mother, but she takes it as a challenge against her or as a challenge against society. Or when I got angry, he’d hold me back. He’d tell me why anger wasn’t going to help.”

Stanley nods like that fit into some theory he was building. He probably had many different theories that he was trying to piece together. 

The next couple days progressed just like that. With Stanley building a profile of what she felt when it came to her dad. Which emotions she could more easily associate with him and why those emotions were important enough for her to remember them. 

Finally, Stanley asks one of the questions that she’s been dreading. “And what Syd do you feel when you think about how he died?”

The rage builds up under skin, but she’s able to bury it further down before she cracks any of the walls of the house. “Anger,” she starts. “Why does he get to leave this shitty world, when I have to stay? Why did he leave me behind without so much as a note? Did he not know that I loved him, that I would miss him, that I would ask myself every day whether I did something wrong? Or did he not care? And which would be worse.”

Stanley nods. He crosses the floor to pull her into his arms as he runs his hands up and down her arms. “Good. That’s good. Feel those emotions. Run through them without allowing your power to try to hurt anything to get away from these feelings. Let them rush over you.”

It takes her a full week before she can talk about her father’s death without her powers trying to come out. She manages to fight them back down each time, but by the eighth day, she no longer has to. The pain is still there, but it isn’t enough to call forth the power. 

She’s so happy that she lunges herself right at Stanley. Takes him right off his feet in the brute strength of her happiness. She dances around the room, and so does Stanley. For another couple hours, they forget that the police are searching for her. They forget that they have a mission, so that they can flee from this tiny town and start over somewhere where Syd isn’t wanted. 

Stanley flicks her nose and sits back down in a posed position of authority. “And ma’am would you say that perhaps this will help with other instances of these emotions that seem to increase your power level?”

She nods. The happiness still filling her with joy. The next few days pass almost normally. With both of them not avoiding anything, and without any flare up in her powers. They both know that it isn’t perfect, but they’re running on textbooks from a public library. A half-dead understanding of super powers, and so far they’re doing great. 

They both agree that they need to be good before they leave, and they need to leave before Stanley’s father gets back. That’s the only way that they’re ever going to be safe, and they both know it. They both also know that the only real way to test that Sydney has a good hold on her powers will be for Stanley to provoke her. 

Sydney hates the idea of having to listen to the one thing in her life that she can still trust trying to hurt her, to shake her trust, but she understands the necessity. They have to be sure that she can control herself in the real world. They have to be confident that nothing bad will happen. So, she takes deep breaths the next morning. 

They both agreed that this would probably work better to shake her confidence, if he left the house for a while and came in angry. He’d say things that he didn’t really mean in order to push her, but he’d have to be realistic. 

Tears fill her eyes as she realizes that for this to work, she’s going to have to doubt that conviction before the end. That hurts. That hurts so much, but a necessary evil. That’s all she tells herself every time her mind goes back into the darkness as she waits. 

The door slams and for a moment, she thinks that the game is up. That Stanley’s dad has come home early. That their tiny little hopes are worthless. That’s before she sees Stanley’s eyes looking at her as if she’s a stain on his existence. 

Her knees give out as she stares at him. 

He gives her the cruelest smile that she’s ever seen. “Did you know that because of your little powers, I don’t have a job anymore?”

Sydney flinches because while sure she knew the truth of that statement, he’d never actually tormented her with the fact that he’d lost most of what he enjoyed in order to protect her from the cops and various other places. 

“Not that you cared enough to ever ask, though. You were more than happy to let me quiz you on your life. Where I know every single little thing that you care about in this world. I know every single flaw you’ve ever had, and you don’t know how I feel about the fact I lost my job.”

Stanley breathes in, and Sydney can feel the familiar urge to explode in rage build up because those weren’t fair statements. It wasn’t like she wanted to have to bare her soul to him, it was just the only way that she could gain control over her powers. So, she squashes the urge down, because otherwise all of this has been for nothing. 

“But that isn’t even the kicker, is it?” he muses. “No, the kicker has to be the fact that I had to watch you murder someone, and I’m still helping you. I’m helping you because I love you, but you don’t love me, and you’ve never even bothered telling me.”

Sydney knows that he’s trying to get under her skin, and it works. She can feel herself get angry. But, not because of the normal reasons. Not because the world is unfair, or his statements. No, she’s angry because she feels so much guilt. Because he’s right. 

The next thing she knows Stanley is against the wall. The wall is cracked, and he’s bleeding. She falls to her knees sobbing. She can barely breathe. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to battle down the magic in her. She was supposed to prove that she could live a normal life. 

But that life is gone, and she’s crawling over to Stanley begging for him to still have a pulse. She can’t even find enough energy to be surprised that she can’t find that pulse. She just sits there crying.   
These are the same words that she tells the cops as she turns herself in. 

“I don’t know how I kill them. I know when I get angry things tend to break around me. Apparently, this includes people. The first time I did it, I ran because I didn’t know what else to do. I knew I killed him, but couldn’t tell you how. I didn’t think jail would help protect anyone. Then, Stanley offered to help. I thought that it would work, we thought it would work. The test failed, and he’s dead,” she confesses. 

The cops handcuff her. The one interrogating her hits a nerve, and she no longer cares enough to try to battle down the natural instinct. The handcuffs around her crack and fall to the ground. So does the table. Luckily, for the cop or perhaps unluckily for the cop, he doesn’t get hit with her powers. They only attack objects this time. 

Distantly, in the far corner of her mind, a part of her points out that she only targets individuals when she’s directly being attacked. When she feels like, the people are actually insulting her. Maybe that’s supposed to help make her better. 

Instead, all that happens is that she’s stuck in a cell with everyone avoiding her. No one wants to trigger the girl who can kill you without meaning to when upset. No one wants to drag her before a court, because they aren’t sure the court would survive. 

She doesn’t object. She tries to ignore the rest of the people on the planet. Afterall, the one person who did trust her, that pushed her to trust herself, was dead. Because, her powers can’t be trusted, all they’ll do is spit out what she loves dead.


End file.
